


Tethys

by Noscere



Series: Titans (RWBY) [8]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Existential Crisis, F/M, Fear of Death, First Time, Fluff and Smut, It's called petit mort for a reason
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-11-22 08:08:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11376096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noscere/pseuds/Noscere
Summary: In death and destruction, and love and lust, the Fall Maiden and her champion come to a new understanding.





	1. Thanatos

**Author's Note:**

> Titaness of fresh water, rivers, clouds, and springs: the great nurse of life. Sometimes equated with Thesis, the primordial goddess of creation.

Pyrrha sighs and works her hands down her calves. Her muscles ache from the past hours spent spring boarding off broken towers and dilapidated walls, like a leaf dancing about in the wind. Beacon remains firmly in the cold claws of Grimm, and every attempt to pry them off is met with iron teeth and hot blood, human blood, Faunus blood, waters the undergrowth of Forever Fall.

Team JNPR has moved from the refugee camp to a Huntsman outpost that borders the city of Vale. Nora and Ren have full access to the best physiotherapists, pulled from Mistral’s unwilling hands, and General Ironwood has provided cybernetic limbs that move as fluidly as flesh and bone. There’s little privacy to be found in the barracks that now house displaced Huntsmen and Huntresses, when bunks are stacked together like firewood for a hearth. She misses the tent, and how Nora’s snores filled the canvas-enclosed cave and Ren attempted acrobatics in his sleep. She misses the softness of Jaune’s hair pressed against her collarbones. These bunks are too hard, too small, too confining for two grown Hunters to luxuriate in the warmth that is life and love.

Pyrrha pauses in her ministrations. Adults. No longer is she a child, able to cry out and run for the safety of someone who knew their duty and how to bandage cuts and wipe away tears. That is her duty now. And with Amber, tucked away in the recesses of Pyrrha’s soul, she must do better. Pyrrha is the light that banishes the Grimm and the soft winds of summer that beat back the encroaching chill of fall. There is nowhere for her to run now.

She wonders where Jaune is. Her partner is more distant, as of late, as he pours over topographical maps of Beacon and attack plans with generals and elder huntresses. The kingdoms, though divided they may be, have a vested interest in returning the CCT network to full capacity.

Pyrrha lies back on her bunk with a sigh. The other Huntsmen filling in and out of the common barracks pay her no heed. That’s one benefit: among her fellows, she is not a tall poppy to be cut down by politician’s harsh words. Together, they bear the burden of failure.

Amber is quiet these days. The Fall Maiden’s soul is tempered with ice, as if she slumbers deep below and waits for the sun to break her free. Pyrrha is glad for the silence.

These three months has taught her more about Jaune. She knows that the soft skin at the crook of his neck and shoulder draws delicious noises out of him if she nibbles at it. She knows the lay of his back and the wounds she caused him, the mountain ridges of scar tissue and the valleys of burns. She knows that he prefers to borrow astringent from one of the older Huntsmen, because it makes him feel more like an adult, and it straightens his spine and gives steel to his voice when he tells a reticent general, “ _it’s your home that’s at risk too._ ”

She wants to see him with her fingers, her tongue, and her ears. There are things that lie to the eyes and deceive the nose. Illusions may hide broken flesh, and perfumes may hide rot, but nothing can hide his heartbeat from her.

 

It was late spring when Beacon had its dance, autumn when it fell, and now it is winter’s turn to have the land.

There’s panicked yelling outside the barracks. Pyrrha winces. Someone must have returned from Beacon, limping away from the Grimm and the death they bring. But they did not return whole.

There’s a certain quality to the sounds of death that Pyrrha has grown intimately accustomed to over the past months. The pain, the panic, the screams before silence comes to claim the poor soul. An ancient story plays out in the hallways of the Hunter's outpost. There is an operating room attached to the outpost, a place to beat death back and claim a little more time for life. Pyrrha feels ice in the air and the wet rattle in the patient's lungs. 

“You won’t die,” a man says over and over again, as if his words could stay the scythe. “C’mon love, fight for me.”

The agonized gasping grows louder. Pyrrha recognizes the injured as the elder Huntsman who lends Jaune his shaving kit.

“S-scared – so scared–“

“We’re almost there,” the man says, desperation flooding his voice, because he too sees the fall of frost that nips buds and shrivels leaves. “I’m here, I’m not going anywhere–“

“-don’t wanna die–“

Pyrrha lowers her head, and for once, wishes she were a goddess. If only she had powers to banish death as well as Grimm.

The squeak of wheels and rubber against tiles fades away. Pyrrha sends up wordless prayers for the injured man. She too understands the man’s fear. 

Because fear creeps at her too, even in the bronze and gold core of the Invincible Girl. Few can see the blackness of her Aura, not when it is tinged red by fall and golden by Amber. None can see how death calls to her, pulling her in like iron filings to a magnet – and how it calls, with its voice like the north wind that signals harvest of ripe wheat and the death of tender shoots too late for summer and the withering of strong stems. Death calls to her, as it has become part of her, melded to Amber inside Pyrrha like a deranged ménage à trois. A void summons a bodiless woman and draws golden dust from Pyrrha’s being with every day that Amber stays a restless soul.

_Sleep,_ Death whispers, _fear no more, feel no more, exist no more_.

Pyrrha screams back at the dark, for dangers with sharp teeth lurk where none can see, and even more frightening is the potential for cessation of existence. Where the Golden Girl once stood, not a mote of her being would be. She has stolen moments with Jaune, here and there: kisses in the back of troop transports, back to back as they stride into battle, a touch of foreheads after the battle is over and the dead lie waiting to be collected. She has had him for three months, and it is not enough.

_More time_ , she begs to unhearing gods, and although she is not yet nineteen, she still pleads, _I want more time with him._

Breathe, and breathe deep.

It is not becoming of a champion to break down in tears.

 

“Hey. I got us on leave for a day,” Jaune says, sitting next to her on the bed. “Told them they were running us ragged.”

Pyrrha laughs, reaching up to tousle his sun-bright hair. “My hero.”

“You want to go for a walk?” he asks in an overly casual tone. He clasps her hands. “I might’ve gotten a few things together. Little getaway out in the woods. We can’t go see your parents in Mistral, but…”

The thought of her parents, worrying away in their cottage by the sea, makes Pyrrha’s heart seize. She musters a smile and squeezes her partner’s hand. “If you yell at a politician for me, my heart is yours.”

Jaune starts. “It’s not already?”

“Jaune.” She smiles at him, this time sincere, and the worry melts from his face like frost on a window. “There’s no one I’d rather have other than you.”

He blushes, a brilliant red that wouldn’t look out of place in Forever Fall.

“Well… I’ve been thinking…” Jaune strokes the back of her hands. His fingers trail up her arm, and rest against her heart. “Maybe we could…?”

There is only one answer for him.

 

* * *

 

The forests surrounding the Hunter’s outpost are old. Moss and lichen are engraved into the craggy bark of the towering oak trees. No leaves drift down to the bare forest floor: the branches above are bare, shivering in the wind. No Grimm roam these woods, not when it’s safely sequestered behind mountains too high for Nevermores to fly over.

They walk hand in hand. Pyrrha’s breath puffs up in misty clouds. Amber stirs a little, as the former Maiden remembers something about a sauna and the laughter of her friends. But Amber fades, replaced by the warmth of Jaune’s gauntleted hands and the cool steel of her armor protecting her chest.

Jaune has sequestered them away, in a little cave built from thick cloth and sturdy steel. The wind questing through the deep woods cannot touch them here. Even tendrils of icy breath are banished from the quilted cloth. There’s a Scroll in case something comes up, and Crocea Mors, Miló and Akoúo rest against the tent’s entrance. Pyrrha feels the small bottle and the foil sachets tucked away in her sash. Her heart races as she zips up the tent behind her.

Jaune removes his sneakers and armor, then lies down on the nest of blankets in the center of the tent. He lights the lamp and screws it into the box sitting by the bedroll. She follows suite, unbuckling her corset to reveal the dark brown tube top below. Pyrrha slips off her greaves and boots, and sits before her partner.

The wind whistles outside.

She longs to know him: the flat plane of his belly, the hard lines of muscle in his thighs, and the sharp jut of his collarbones.

Pyrrha is the first to approach. She sets her hands on the hem of his black sweatshirt and asks. Jaune lifts up his arms, aiding her in the removal of the Pumpkin Pete-emblazoned garment. She does not want to see more of her successes and failures: she wants him, and him alone.

Her partner undoes her sash, and lays it aside. Pyrrha unbuckles his belt, and pulls it off. Jaune is more hesitant while tugging her black shorts down, but one look from her is more than enough to steady his hands. She works his jeans down his calves, feels the scars from Beowolves and Creepers that lace his skin like the network of capillaries on a leaf.

“Touch me,” Jaune requests. “I want to see you.”

It seems the partners are on the same page.

 


	2. Eros

She draws whorls on his chest, then encircles his nipples with her lips. Jaune makes greedy noises and fists his hands in the sheets. His hands slowly rise to cup her breasts through her bra. Suddenly greedy, seeking touch like a moth flies to the flame, Pyrrha divests her of the last of her garments. She brings his calloused palms over her body, letting them roam over the deep grooves of scars left by Beowolves’ claws and the soft dip of her hipbones.

He looks at her with stars in his eyes and the universe bared open in his soul.

Isn’t that how goddesses are born? Some supplicant begs her to raise them high until their wings brush the sun. And the goddess, in fear of the chaos and void from which all life springs, lifts them to the sky where they sing of her deeds.

He’s an Icarus, drunk not on freedom but desire. Pyrrha covers the small of his back, as if that would prevent the sun from melting his wings, because no one should deny this man the sky. Not while she still draws breath.

Pyrrha finally dips a hand past the elastic of his boxers. She finds him hard and wanting. The length of his cock brushes against her hand, yearning for more of her touch. Clear fluid slides from the slit, like dewdrops shed from a blade of grass. The lamplight burnishes the tints of his skin, transmuting his skin into bronze and gilded marble. But it is not metal, frozen by the wind, that meets her palm as she curls her hand around him. He is velvet around a solid core, and heat, glorious heat, pulses through him to the beat of his heart.

“Off,” Jaune says, pushing his boxers down, “I need–“

Pyrrha gets the fabric off and works a hand around him. He smells of musk, of soap from the showers and the hard metallic tang of armor. She kisses him on the head, then licks the broad side of his cock, trying to spell out wordless declarations of love and trust.

Jaune places a cautious hand in her hair. When no protest ventures forward, his grip grows tighter.

She takes courage and takes him down her throat. Pyrrha gags, popping up for breath.

“I’m so sorry!”

“D-don’t be,” she says, pushing him back on the blankets. Outside, the wind knocks at the tent with icy fingers. Pyrrha shivers in the sudden coolness, and moves to straddle her partner’s body. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

Jaune raises an eyebrow. “What were you expecting?”

“I’m not quite sure,” Pyrrha says, fingering his balls with her free hand, “but I do like what I see.”

Jaune blushes. He rubs her nipples between his thumb and forefinger, hands so used to wielding a blade like a club weaving delicate movements just for her.

“How did I catch the eye of a girl like you?” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to her collarbones.

 

She catches her breath – fills her lungs with musk and sweat and the lavender soap used to wash the blankets – and poses her lips on his cock once again. She licks the length of him, savoring the taste. She feels the smooth swell of veins and the shifting of his foreskin, the smoothness of the head and the long groan that starts around Jaune’s belly when she takes him in her mouth again.

Her partner yells out. His hips cant up, slamming into her mouth. Pyrrha’s eyes widen, as she tastes thick bitter fluid.

“S-sorry,” Jaune pants, hiding his face behind his hands, “it’s so good, I–“

Pyrrha moves off his legs and kisses him. “It’s all right. I’ve got you.”

“I didn’t want it to go this way,” he moans, turning over to face the pillows. “I had a plan, and I just messed it all up, and gah! I’m such an idiot.”

“Jaune.” She cards his hair. “We talked about this.”

He blows out a breath. Had he been younger, perhaps he would have continued to sulk. But her partner – baptized by fire and blood – uncurls, and looks her in the eyes. “Yeah. You’re right. Uh… look, I can go in another thirty minutes. Twenty, maybe. The point is, I can get up again.”

Pyrrha hides a smile. Jaune sounds like the tactical mastermind she knows and loves.

“Until then, why don’t I show you what I had planned?”

She entwines her fingers with his own. “That sounds grand.”

Drink, and drink deep. Jaune sucks lightly on her folds, then moves to kiss up her lower lips.

She sighs. Heat crescendos through her, burning away the fear. Here, with Jaune, among cotton blankets and the wind howling outside, she is safe. She could spend an eternity feeling him, loving him, knowing him, and she would never be aware of the time that had passed.

Jaune licks his lips. “I… uh…”

Pyrrha tucks a lock of his straw-gold hair behind his ear. “Do I take your breath away?” she asks with a grin. 

“I could spend the rest of my life like this,” he murmurs, rocking into her hips. For a moment, there is black fear rotting away in Pyrrha’s heart, and death beats at the walls of their sanctuary, but then Jaune places his hands on her back and pulls her close.

He banishes the fear, coiling dark and fathomless within her gut like the slow creep of night in the day; Jaune casts out light and life like the sun’s embrace on a warm spring day.

Sing, and sing deep with a voice like the mountains towering over Mistral. He waxes and wanes in the flow of his hips, a ceaseless tide pulled by her orbit. Jaune murmurs imprecations and praises and reaches for her, only her, with love so bright in her eyes it almost burns to see.

They move in a dance as old as the stars. He pulls her in, in, crooking his fingers within her in a movement that sends heat spiraling through her head. Jaune is clumsy, lips moving to kiss her at odd angles and his tongue swiping along the wrong place, but he is a quick learner, and quicker still when Pyrrha guides his head so that he ministers to her bud. She moans, arching her back. He pulls her closer, settling her thighs firmly around her hips. Higher and higher, she rises like a leaf blown skywards into the heaven’s embrace.

Electricity sparks within her. She snaps, and comes crashing back to earth, shuddering and moaning his name.

Jaune catches her, presses two fingers to her belly and cradles her head with his free arm. They lay there, sweat cooling, bodies heaving in unsteady breaths.

 

Pyrrha feels the length of him: hard muscle, fire-scarred skin, stubble yet to be shaved. She maps him out with her fingers and seeks to engrave them in her memory. Jaune too, is learning her: he seeks out the sounds she makes when he nibbles on her earlobe, and the way she buries her head against his chest and pulls him tight like two magnets caught in each other’s draw.

She breathes in, out. He smells of cardamom and spice, musky grapes and astringent borrowed from an elder Huntsman. She breathes deeper, and finds the clean scent of Jaune’s skin and sweat. Like fumes from strong wine, Pyrrha finds herself intoxicated. Here is proof that they live; here is the sacrifice for which they have toiled; here are the minutes they have stolen from death.

“What are you looking at?” Pyrrha asks.

Jaune smiles. “Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are?”

She smiles back, and kisses him.

Her fingers drift lower as she seeks to explore him once more. Pyrrha encircles his cock with her fingers, and with a few slow strokes, brings him to full hardness yet once again.

“You want this?” she asks, seeking a condom from his pants.

“I want you,” Jaune confirms, fishing out a foil-wrapped package from beneath the bedroll. He rips it open and sheathes his cock in the condom.

She admires the way he strains against the thin latex, and how he twitches as she straddles his thighs and centers his cock between her lower lips. The lube is cool, but not unpleasantly slow, and it warms as she rocks back and forth on his hips.

“Pyrrha,” he groans. It’s as much an order as it is a plea.

The warrior sits up just enough to pose the head of his cock at her entrance. She sinks down, inch by inch, letting the burn of stretching muscle suffuse her.

“Dust,” he breathes, “oh, Pyrrha…”

Pyrrha’s breath hitches. He is much wider than her fingers, and he fills her in a way that she cannot on her own. She closes her eyes and reaches for his hand. Jaune sits up, and within seconds, she finds his lips on hers and his arms wrapped around the loop of her waist.

“I’m good,” Pyrrha says in between breaths. “It’s a good pain.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Jaune says, making to lift her up.

She interlaces his fingers with her own. “You won’t. Trust me.”

If Pyrrha looked, she knows that she’d find the same trust shining back in Jaune’s eyes.

She massages her lower belly. Jaune grunts and twitches inside her.

“Is it good?”

“It tickles,” he admits, “your hand’s too close to my belly.”

She laughs, and the tension breaks. They rise and fall: soft thrusts, skin against skin, heat that consumes just as much as it creates. It gets easier to rock together, and the wet slap of her against him reveals how much she wants him. Pyrrha works a finger between their joining. She works small circles around her clit, then weaves a path down to stroke his balls. Jaune groans and clings to her, thrusting harder, but she sets the pace and that is a slow, measured beat that allows her to study him and know him more.

“I love you,” she says, her red hair swishing through the air like a bird’s wing.

Jaune doesn’t reply; at least, not in words. He answers her with fingers threading through her hair, pulling her lightly to him; in the way he adjusts and readjusts until he finds the spot that makes her sing; he breaks her down and builds her back up, sending her closer and closer to climax.

If it were a fairytale of Pyrrha’s childhood dreams, they would end together. But Jaune is already tired from one climax. He comes first, hips jutting into her own as he spends himself. Pyrrha’s fingers quicken on her clit. She follows him, drifting up into the haze and slowly descending into a luxurious heat as climax rolls through her.

For a moment, they lie together, and the world has stopped around them.

 

Jaune raises a weak hand and slaps it against the ground. “Urgh. Clean up. I don’t wanna.”

Pyrrha laughs. In much greater control of her faculties, she removes and ties off the condom. “At least you didn’t tear it.”

“Don’t jinx us,” Jaune says, wiping off the sweat with the corner of the bedroll. “At least, not yet.”

“You’d like to have a family?” Pyrrha’s mouth is strangely dry as she settles beside him. “With… with me?”

“Yeah. I’d like a family with you.” He swallows. “Two point five kids, white picket fence, a dog – wait, are you a cat person?”

“I’m not sure how I feel about the kids,” Pyrrha answers honestly. “But I am one hundred percent a dog person.” She scratches him on the head. “Perhaps something fluffy, and golden, and a bit dopey.”

“Hey.” He bats at her hand. “I eventually noticed.”

The winds do not stop howling. Her hearts still races from the deadly fingers laid on her soul. The fear crawls back like a wolf, battered and bruised, from the brink.

But Pyrrha breathes, and breathes deep. She interlaces her fingers with Jaune’s, and feels the pulse of his own.

For a moment, the gods are in their heaven and their heroes are safely ensconced with them.

 


End file.
